The TDC report notes that in 2006 there were 1,923,900 people employed in the Sydney statistical division (SD) in 2006, with 716,500 jobs (37%) located in the 33 centres. Between 2001 and 2006, 71,350 new jobs were created in Sydney, with 26,600 (37%) of these jobs in centres. The report also notes that employment growth was much higher between 1996 and 2001 than in the 2001 to 2006 period. Between 1996 and 2001 employment in centres grew by 13% and across the Sydney SD by 9%, whilst between 2001 and 2006 employment slowed to a growth rate of 4% for both employment centres and the Sydney SD.

Whilst the TDC report provides a great overview, further analysis based on centre locations shows that there are strong regional variations. In this post I will start with a snapshot of employment in 2006. Before we start, a word of warning: the following figures which have been derived from this TDC report should be viewed with some caution. There is a significant degree of undercounting and failure to answer census questions specifically related to employment. For example, we don’t know where around 6% of the Sydney workforce works and another 4% have no fixed location. I have left these “location unknown” workers out of most of the following statistics.

Another complication is that changes between the 2001 and 2006 censuses which make it difficult to compare them. For example, the TDC report notes that 2006 journey to work data uses place of usual residence, while previous in years the place of enumeration was used for home location and trip origin.

In addition, I have used LGA-level data from another TDC journey to work table, which has slightly different employment totals to those in the centres report. Also, whilst the TDC centres are based on those in the Metropolitan Strategy, the data is not directly comparable to the figures in the Metro document. Above all, this material does not take into account the impact of the many changes that have occurred since 2006, including the global financial crisis. All this means that the following analysis should be seen as a guide and no responsibility is taken for its accuracy.

With the warnings out of the way, let’s have a look at the stats. Eastern Sydney obviously has the majority of employment and the majority of centres as defined by the TDC – 20, compared to 13 in Western Sydney. Of the people employed in centres, only 21% work in Greater Western Sydney (GWS) Within eastern Sydney (for these purposes, the area covered by the rest of the councils in the Sydney Statistical Division but outside the GWS region), over 230,000 people are employed in the CBD alone.

In fact, the CBD accounts for 12% of Sydney’s total employment – this makes up nearly a third of all of Sydney’s centres-based employment and over 20% of eastern Sydney’s jobs. Almost another 30% of eastern Sydney jobs are in other centres, which means that just under half the east’s employment is centre-based (table 1).

The story in Western Sydney is very different. Employment is much more dispersed – only just over a quarter of the region’s centre-based jobs are in TDC-defined centres and no one centre dominates. Parramatta, with just over 34,000 jobs, is Western Sydney’s biggest employment centre but accounts for under 6% of the region’s employment, with 19.6% of the region’s jobs located in other centres (table 2 and graph 1).

TABLE 2: SYDNEY EMPLOYMENT BY REGION SUMMARY, 2006

Source: based on NSW Transport Data Centre data

Region/Location

Number

% of centres

% of region

% of total

Eastern Sydney*

Sydney CBD

230,049

32.2%

20.3%

12.0%

Other centres

333,538

46.7%

29.4%

17.4%

Centres total

563,587

78.9%

49.7%

29.4%

Not in centres

571,142

–

50.3%

29.8%

Eastern Sydney Total

1,134,729

–

100.0%

59.1%

Western Sydney**

Parramatta

34,234

4.8%

5.7%

1.8%

Other centres

116,675

16.3%

19.6%

6.1%

Centres total

150,909

21.1%

25.3%

7.9%

Not in centres

445,063

–

74.7%

23.2%

Western Sydney Total

595,972

–

100.0%

31.1%

Sydney

Sydney centres total

714,496

100.0%

41.3%

37.2%

Not in centres total

1,016,205

–

58.7%

53.0%

Total

1,730,701

–

100.0%

90.2%

No location

No fixed address

78,077

–

–

4.1%

Unknown

110,342

–

–

5.7%

No location total

188,419

–

–

9.8%

Discrepancy between centres and LGA data

4,780

–

–

0.2%

Sydney SD

1,923,900

–

–

100.0%

* Eastern Sydney – all Sydney LGAs outside Greater Western Sydney

** Western Sydney – the 14 LGAs comprising Greater Western Sydney

# Not in centres totals based on TDC LGA employment tables

Graph 1:

In my next post I’ll look at changes in employment centres from 2001 to 2006.